


Amnesia in Space

by writteninweakness



Category: Amnesia (Game & Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, Gen, Orion is human, Pre-Relationship, Some Humor, Some Plot, another incomplete au fic as an attempted one shot of sorts, but endgame was meant to be Kent/Heroine because its me, originally posted on tumblr but i don't have a tumblr anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21573685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writteninweakness/pseuds/writteninweakness
Summary: Waka leads a crew of wanted criminals and rebels in a galaxy at war. Unfortunately for them, they just crash landed on a planet far away from anything of use... except maybe a certain waitress and her younger brother.
Relationships: Heroine & Orion (Amnesia), Heroine/Kent (Amnesia)
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is another one of my AU ideas that I've started and not completed. I keep wanting to go back to it as well, though I haven't managed to do that yet aside from a couple scenes.
> 
> Kent's white coat for Amnesia Crowd inspired this and my attempts at [cover art.](https://writteninweakness.blogspot.com/2019/11/pictures-for-amnesia-space-au.html)
> 
> The first chapter is here and the other parts are various scenes I wrote. I'd still like to finish this someday, but since I am struggling so much right now, I am only moving it here so it is available since I no longer have a tumblr for mental health reasons.

* * *

“Nhil’s out there, you know,” Orion said, looking up at the stars again. “He’s out there in space somewhere.”

Kokoa tried not to sigh. She knew Orion believed that their older brother was out there somewhere, living a great life as an adventurer, but she knew better. She couldn’t afford that kind of delusion. Nhil had forsaken them on this outer sector planet, leaving her to try and support them when there were no jobs and no resources worth exploiting.

Otherwise the galactic war would be here. One of the factions would have harvested everything this rock had and left it a dead hulk. She knew that. She wasn’t kidding herself about it. They didn’t have good or evil anymore, couldn’t when the only order anyone not on this planet knew was the rule of self-preservation.

Nhil might have hoped they’d be safer here, but that still didn’t mean it was any easier for her to accept that they’d been abandoned. She worked long hours in a tavern so they had enough to eat, but hardly anyone had any money to spend in the tavern these days, so she was getting less and less shifts. She didn’t know what they would do if things kept up like this.

She hadn’t had enough for food for both of them this week, only Orion, and it was getting harder to keep that from him. He kept asking her why she wasn’t eating and when she’d eaten, and she’d never been good at lying to him.

“Do you think we should go find him?”

Kokoa sighed. “There aren’t even passenger ships that come out this far anymore. Nhil hired the last one. No one’s been here since.”

“The freight ones still come twice a year.”

She ruffled his hair. “We’re not going anywhere. This is home now.”

Orion looked up at her. “The school closed. Most of the people who did live here have left, trying to find ore in the mountains. All my friends are gone.”

Kokoa knew that. She knew he was lonely and bored, and if there was any way to do something about that, she would, but she wasn’t stupid. Neither of them were strong enough to make that trip to the mountains, and even if they were, she had a feeling it was suicide to go. People weren’t willing to stay and starve, so they risked a dangerous climb up a nearly impassible mountain to chase a legend.

No one had ever come back from the mountain.

She knew what that meant.

“Be patient, Orion. Things can change.”

“Yeah. If Nhil comes back, it’ll be okay again,” he said, trying to manage a smile. She wrapped her arms around him and held on, trying to soothe both of them. She didn’t know how. Things were bad, and she couldn’t lie about that. Orion wasn’t stupid. He already knew much more than she wanted. If he wasn’t so optimistic, believing in Nhil so much, he’d be closer to hopeless.

Like she was.

“Wait, Neesan, look,” Orion said, pulling away and pointing up to the sky. “It’s a falling star. Make a wish. Maybe Nhil will come back.”

She looked at the sky, watching as something burned across the stars. She grabbed hold of Orion and held onto him, worried. That was no star. She didn’t think it was a comet, either.

That was a ship.

And that meant the war was finally here.

* * *

“Situation report.”

Shin grimaced, forcing himself up from the floor. Everything ached, but he didn’t think anything was broken at the moment. They were damned lucky. The impact of the crash should have killed them, and he knew it.

He wasn’t surprised Waka made it. Waka seemed impervious. No one ever managed to get close to their captain, not in any of the time Shin had served under him. He didn’t even look like he’d been in a crash at all.

“If my crew is dead, I may have to mutilate some corpses.”

Shin grimaced. “I thought only Toma was that deranged.”

“Better,” Waka said as he walked towards him. “And the reason I made him head of security, but that is not important right now. I asked for a situation report. Only one of you has responded. My command crew is six officers, and the rest of the crew, while mostly forgettable, is also silent.”

“ _Just got intraship communications back online,”_ Ikki said over the comm. _“_ _Engineering’s a mess, and I don’t even want to look at the hull right now. We’re looking a weeks worth of repair in drydock.”_

Waka adjusted his glasses. “I trust you can do better than that, Ikki.”

“ _Guess that depends.”_

“On what?” Shin asked, having a feeling they were all going to get drafted into repairs again. That seemed to happen a lot these days, but then just being part of Waka’s crew made them the galaxy’s most wanted.

“ _On if the reactor blows or not. The leak’s contained for now, but it might not hold. I’m going to need help.”_

Shin knew it.

Waka frowned. “Did we lose navigation?”

“What was functional before no longer is, not that I wasn’t already doing most of the calculations myself,” Kent answered, dragging himself up from the floor to his full height. His white coat had almost turned black after the impact, and he didn’t look much better. “Regretfully, I was not able to change our angle of descent enough to avoid a heavy impact. As it was, we very nearly burned up in atmosphere.”

Shin had figured as much, but this stuff always sounded that much worse coming from Kent.

“Are you injured?”

“It does not seem so.”

Shin shook his head, knowing Waka was probably thinking the same thing he was, because Kent could be focused enough on his math or the repairs not to even notice he’d been hurt. They’d almost lost him twice now because of that.

“Ikki will need your help with the reactor,” Waka said. “Go with Shin. Stop by the medbay on your way down and get checked out first.”

“I do not need treatment or an escort. I am—”

“Kent, we don’t have a navigational computer. We have you,” Shin said, taking him by the arm. “No way in hell we can afford to lose you. Let’s go.”

* * *

“Do I even want to know how bad it really is?”

“No,” Ikkyu answered, and Kent had to echo the sentiment. Even well outside the containment area, he could tell that the situation was dangerous and unstable. “We’ve taken a few bad hits lately, and luck hasn’t been with us. We haven’t had time to do any real repairs before we have to leave again, and now we have what you see here.”

“Death coming in any second?” Shin asked, frowning. “Do we even have anything to repair it with?”

Ikkyu nodded. “Yes, but it means cannibalizing from other systems. Nothing essential, but it’ll put us behind in other areas. We’ll need to find something for them. Ken… you know anything about where we are?”

“Dude, he may be making calculations on the fly because the computer can’t, but he’s not a star map,” Shin said, shaking his head as he did. Ikkyu gave him a faint smile, exhaustion overtaking him as he closed his eyes for a moment.

“Waka asked for something away from any space lanes, trade routes, or contested areas.”

“The kind of place hell forgot.”

“Yes, Shin, very helpful. Point being, this is a planet with a breathable atmosphere but little development and it is unlikely we’d find more than raw materials.”

“Damn it, the synthesizers have been offline for months,” Ikkyu said. “That’s not going to be enough.”

“Shin, I suggest you take Ikkyu up to the medbay to be examined and possibly sedated for a short while so he can rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“Ikkyu, your hair is black and full of random small debris. You were wearing that same shirt the last time we spoke which was at least three days ago, and I do not believe those dark marks under your eyes were caused by another fight.”

“He’s right,” Shin said. “You look like hell, Ikki. Let’s go. Kent just got done getting checked out, so let him handle this for a bit, and you can take over later.”

“I’m the engineer here.”

“You got that job because you’re ‘good with your hands.’ Both of you could do the other one’s job, which is good because we’d be screwed if something happened to either one of you, but right now, we can’t afford that. And if you don’t come with me, I’ll get Toma. Is that what you really want?”

Ikkyu grimaced. “No.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Kent watched them leave for a moment before looking back at the reactor. Nothing would matter if the containment on it failed, so that would have to be dealt with first. He had been thinking of some improvements that might help them avoid this situation in the future, and this did seem like a good time to implement them.

That might require getting the synthesizers back online first, though. To make the appropriate kind of containment unit, they would have to fabricate it, and this ship lacked any kind of facility for that. It was hardly designed for long term space travel, but Kent did not know of anyone on this crew who had much choice in being here. Other alternatives were far worse.

He tugged on the coat that still marked him as one of the enemy and grimaced. Defection had been the only choice, though it was far from simple all the same.

He shook his head as he turned to the machines along the wall. If he did not fix this, they could not leave this planet, and if they could not, Kent lost all chance he had of ever freeing his parents.


	2. Additional Scene #1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew sets out to look for supplies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some vague thoughts about how Kent would be a super evil super villain, but Kent's a sweetheart, and I never ever want him to be the bad guy. This was as close as I will ever get to such a concept, a case of mistaken identity.

* * *

“I’d say they don’t get many visitors around here.”

“Judging from this planet’s relative location in the universe, I believe that is likely true,” Ken agreed, adjusting the sleeve of his jacket again before pushing up his glasses. “Toma, please refrain from killing anyone while we are here.”

“You make me sound like a trigger-happy madman.”

“At least one part of that is true,” Shin muttered, and Toma glared at him. Ikki wanted to laugh, but the way the natives were eying them made even him wary. He’d lay good odds this was going to end in violence, and that was even allowing for the possibility that none of these people were aware of the prices on their heads.

“It’s not even us,” Toma said. “It’s Kent. As usual. Why is it you never leave that damned coat on the ship anyway?”

Ikki didn’t want to have this conversation again. They didn’t have to have Ken’s reasons, but knowing him and his general lack of attachment to anything and almost excessive practicality, if Ken was holding onto his imperialist past, he had a damned good reason for it. He’d never been willing to discuss it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist.

Ignoring Toma, Ken moved toward the larger building at the end of the street, taking a step inside the door. The rest of them could hear people shouting about imperialists and invasions from here, and Shin swore under his breath as he and Toma charged forward into the fight.

Ikki shook his head. Those two never waited long enough for Ken’s odd form of diplomacy, but it often worked better than anyone thought it would, better than it had a right to. He followed the others in at a normal pace, trying to keep things calm on his own end even as the town’s denizens ran past him in fear.

“It does seem unlikely even the imperialists would be interested in this place,” Ken said, and Ikki thought the boy next to the waitress was about to start a fight with him. She held him back, facing Ken down with more bravery than anyone else in the room. “Do you even have a trading post here?”

“There was a store, but when the shipments stopped coming, they closed up and left for the mines,” she answered, tightening her grip on her brother. “You don’t look like traders.”

“Ah, Ken only looks giant and terrifying,” Ikki said, moving up to her with a smile. “He’s actually quite—”

“Ikkyu.”

He flinched. Why did Ken always have to use that name? “Ignore him. I’m Ikki, and I’m sure a lovely lady like you can assist us. These mines you speak of… they wouldn't be raw vanadine, would they?”

Ken snorted. “Ikkyu, you have a better chance of this planet sustaining Unruh radiation and being able to finish converting the quantum inertia to allow us to travel by solar power.”

Ikki smiled. “Don’t think we won’t, Ken. Between your genius and mine, we’ll figure it out. No more dangerous reactors for us, nope. Though… speaking of dangerous reactors, we really do need to find something close to vanadine so we don’t lose containment on ours.”

“No one knows what they actually mine,” she answered in a low voice, placing her hands over her brother’s ears as he fought to get them off. “And no one ever comes back from the mines.”

“Damn it.”

“Relax, Shin. That’s actually not surprising if it is vanadine.” Ikki saw Ken nod in agreement. Improper vanadine mining was almost always fatal. “We’ll need to take a look.”

“You and your plans that are going to get us killed.”

“My plans? Oh, please. Do we really need to discuss Baralus IV again?”

“No,” Ken said, turning to leave. Ikki saw the girl shudder, holding her brother tight and shook his head. Of any of them, she probably had the least to fear from Ken, but she’d made the same assumption everyone did—that Ken was an imperialist waiting for his chance to harm anyone who got in his way.

She probably wouldn’t even believe the man was actually a pacifist, would she?


	3. Additional Scene #2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Orion stows away on the ship, her life has changed, and she doesn't know how to feel about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was always the intention to have Orion stow away on the ship and that was when the story really got started.
> 
> Of course, I started back with how they met, which made sense, so... I never got that far, but the Kent/Heroine shipper in me ended up writing this scene anyway.

* * *

Kokoa stared out at the stars. She didn’t know that she’d ever find them less fascinating, at least not so long as they were on the ship. She placed her hand on the glass, tempted to trace patterns into them again. She couldn’t look away, even if she should be sleeping. She had promised she’d find some way of making herself useful on this trip, though she knew it would be impossible for her to earn her passage even if she spent all her waking hours working. She wasn’t qualified for anything on the ship, not like the other women—Sawa with her medical training was invaluable to them, and Mine was the cook, but what was Kokoa? She could make a bit of food, but Mine had already made it clear she didn’t want any help from her.

She leaned her head forward and sighed. It wasn’t that she could regret what she’d done in following Orion onto the ship, there was no way she could have lost him, too, after Nhil disappeared. She also knew that they wouldn’t have lasted much longer where they were, so Orion stowing away on this ship was actually the best thing that could have happened to them both, though she did still feel guilty about it.

“You are aware this is one of the structurally compromised areas of the ship, aren’t you? This is not a good place for… whatever it is you are doing.”

Startled, she jerked and turned around to face Kent, who was frowning at her again. She thought she irritated him more than anyone on the ship, and he certainly hadn’t been happy when he spoke of the drain on their resources that two more people would be. She swallowed, not sure what to expect from him. Waka had said they could stay, and he was the captain, but Kent had nearly as much authority and everyone else seemed to listen to him unless Waka disagreed with him.

“It… it was just easier to see the stars,” she admitted. The room she shared with Orion now was not a bad place by any means, but the window was much smaller, and she ran the risk of waking him when she was restless like this. She looked back at them, tempted to touch the glass again in spite of his words. Would it break if she kept doing that? It couldn’t even be normal glass, but she didn’t know what it was made of, just like a thousand other things she’d never gotten to learn about on that forgotten planet where she’d grown up.

Kent came closer to her, his eyes on the window as he stood next to her. “Yes, at one point I believe this was the observation deck. Most of it has been damaged too badly to be used, and the crew’s number is small enough there’s little time for anyone to linger here, so it sees no use and as a non-essential part of the ship, repairing it has low priority as long as the hull remains intact.”

Kokoa grimaced. “I… That seems like such a shame. It’s beautiful here.”

He tilted his head. “Ikkyu would see the beauty in it, he likes to look for such trivial things, and he’d also likely inform you that this is the de facto ‘date spot’ on a ship like this.”

She shook her head. “That’s—it’s not like that with Ikki. I mean, he’s been flirting with me since I got onboard, but I’m not interested in him.”

“Unusual. Most women find him very appealing. His genetics include a species that is said to be a walking aphrodisiac to humans. Your immunity to that is curious. I have yet to see a biologically normal female or the equivalent thereof fail to respond to him. The nurse keeps herself medicated, so an artificial immunity is possible, however… Is it perhaps the planet where we found you? The geological data was lacking, but with some of the variants I’ve noticed in the base supplies we took from there, it may well have been your environment.”

“Do you see everything as a science experiment?”

Kent frowned. “I… No. I just… when something is of interest, I tend to puzzle over it until I’ve explained it to my satisfaction.”

“And I’m of interest to you?”

She thought there was a slight tinge to his face as he turned his head away. “You are the newest arrival on this ship. Everyone is curious, to some degree, but… I suppose I have more reason than most to be… concerned with every new arrival.”

“Because people don’t like knowing you were an imperialist?”

Kent looked back at her and that expression was more of the _how stupid can you be_ than a normal frown. “You do realize Ikkyu was not exaggerating when he told you that you are traveling with some of the most wanted criminals in space.”

She actually had thought he was kidding, since he’d started talking about pirates and gotten Orion so excited he hadn’t slept at all that night. He kept insisting he was going to stay a pirate and talking in an accent that was straight from bad holodramas.

“The bounty on my head is higher than that on Waka’s.”

She stared at Kent in disbelief. “I… What? You… I know you’re smart, and you can calculate those complicated things for navigation in your head when Nhil told us it took computers as big as a ship to do that most of the time, but… that’s not a criminal thing. It’s amazing. I’ve never met anyone before who was as smart as you.”

Kent’s smile wasn’t a happy one. “Yes, well… your brother’s exaggeration notwithstanding, that’s not it. I… I was a scientist for the imperialists. I was raised as one and a part of their weapons development program alongside my parents. I was never meant to leave that role.”

“That’s… They… forced you to make weapons for them? And… they want you back? Or are they… do they think you know too much and...” She couldn’t finish that. She barely knew Kent, but someone killing him for what he knew was so wrong it went against everything in her.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and almost jumped again.

“They do not want me dead. Unlike the others, my bounty will only be paid if I’m brought in alive.” Kent frowned again. “I… It is strange to me to see someone so worried about that when they don’t even like me.”

She winced. “It’s not… you scared me when Orion and I were first discovered. I… you did seem heartless in talking about resources and leaving us behind, but… Well, you still do a little, even if I understand a bit more now that I’ve seen how bad the ship is and how little there is for everyone. So I… It’s still… I don’t… it’s not right. The imperialists are wrong to do that to you. Unless… No, you don’t seem like someone who would want to make weapons. I swear that’s not you even if I don’t know you well, and even if it was... wasting such a mind on weapons when you could do so many other wonderful things...”

“You… are too kind for your own good, and I fear you won’t last long in this new environment,” Kent said, and she flinched. “Though the others will do their best to see to it you are safe, I suppose, so there is that.”

“Them? Just… what, Toma and Ikki and maybe Shin—I’m not sure about Waka—but not you?”

“I… Normally I would say something about survival instincts and the general rules that follow with such theories as natural selection and… Excuse me. I need to go.”

“Kent?” She called after him, but he walked away so fast she didn’t have a hope of keeping up with him, especially since she didn’t know the ship like he did and got turned around in the same corridor again.

She sighed and leaned back against the wall, thinking of all she’d learned just now, her feelings a jumbled mess as she tried to make sense of anything.

The only thing she was sure of was that she absolutely did not want the imperialists to ever get their hands on Kent again.


End file.
